Like a curious package, contents unknown, I was passed from one automatic servant to another till I finally reached the Torishihimari or mistress of ceremonies.  By clock-work she offered me a seat on the floor, a fan and congratulations.  This last simply because I was me.  The house was ancient and beautiful.  The room in which I sat had nothing in it but matting as fine as silk, a rare old vase with two flowers and a leaf in formal arrangement, and an atmosphere of aloofness that lulled mind and body to restful revery.  After my capacity for tea and sugared dough was tested, the little serving maid fanning me, bowing every time I blinked, the paper doors near by divided noiselessly and, framed by the dim light, sat the young bride, quaint and oriental as if she had stepped out of some century-old kakemono.  In contrast to my recent hostesses it was like coming from a garden of brilliant flowers into the soft, quiet shadows of a bamboo grove.  No modern touch about this lady.  She had been reduced by rule from a romping girl to a selfless creature fit for a Japanese gentleman’s wife and no questions asked.  Her hair, her dress, and even her speech were strictly by the laws laid down in a book for the thirty-first day of the first month after marriage.  But I would like to see the convention with a crust thick enough to entirely obliterate one woman’s interest in another whose clothes and life belong to a distant land.  When I told her I had come to Japan against Jack’s wishes and was going to follow him to China if I could, she paled at my rashness.  How could a woman dare disobey?  Would not my husband send me home, take my name off the house register and put somebody in my place?

Well now, wouldn’t you like to see the scientist play any such tricks with me—­that blessed old Jack who smiles at my follies, asks my advice, and does as he pleases, and for whom there has never been but the one woman in the world!  I struggled to make plain to her the attitude of American men and women and the semi-independence of the latter.  As well explain theology to a child.  To her mind the undeviating path of absolute obedience was the only possible way.  Anything outside of a complete renunciation of self-interest and thought meant ruin and was not even to be whispered about.  I gave it up and came back to her sphere of poetry and mothers-in-law.

When I said good-by there was a gentle pity in her eyes, for she was certain her long-time friend was headed for the highroad of destruction.  But instead I turned into the dim solitude of Shiba Park.  I had something to think about.  To-day’s experiences had painted anew in naming colors the difference in husbands.  How prone a woman is, who is free and dearly beloved, to fall into the habit of taking things for granted, forgetting how one drop of the full measure of happiness, that a good husband gives her, would turn to rosy tints the gray lives of hundreds of her kind who are wives in name only.  Her appreciation may be abundant but it is the silent kind.  Her bugaboo is fear of sentiment and when it is too late, she remembers with a heart-break.